Fernández and colleagues’ study refines the climate forecast for coastal California over the next 15 years (2020-2030) and determines that a warmer, normal rainfall future is likely in the near term. Interestingly, in some parts of the coast redwood range the climate is predicted to change more than others. Imagine the average temperature and rainfall conditions that the coast redwood forest has experienced since the 1890s as a bubble over the forest. This new study finds that this climatic “bubble” will most likely move – expanding 34% in the north and retreating from the forests south of San Francisco.

Luckily, warmer conditions, like the ones predicted for the southern extent of the coast redwood range, are familiar to the long-lived coast redwoods. In fact, there have been multiple years over the last century when the type of climate predicted for the coast redwood forest in the decade ahead has already occurred. Research by Save the Redwoods League’s RCCI lead researcher Stephen Sillett on the growth rates of coast redwoods shows that growth rates have been on the rise, not the decline, during the most recent decades. The forest is already reacting to climate changes and so far the trends are positive.

The League has sponsored this research study since 2011 through its Redwoods and Climate Change Initiative. Learn more about our climate change research on redwoods here.

One of biologist Debbie Woollett’s star colleagues has four legs. Wicket is a Labrador mix for Working Dogs for Conservation, an organization that Woollett co-founded to apply dogs’ abilities to conservation projects. Wicket can recognize the scents of 26 species and has “alerted” on moon bears in China, elephants in Southeast Asia, invasive snails in Hawaii, and grizzly bears and black bears in North America.